DEBORAH GUZZI - POEMS

Deborah Guzzi writes fulltime. Her third book, The Hurricane, is available through Prolific Press. Her poetry appears in Allegro, Shooter, Amethyst Review & Foxglove Journal in the UK-Existere, Ekphrastic Review, Scarlet Leaf Review & Subterranean Blue Poetry, Canada - Tincture, Australia - mgv2>publishing, France - Cha: Asian Review, Hong Kong, China - Vine Leaves Journal, Australia - Scarlet Leaf Review - Greece, pioneertown, Sounding Review, Bacopa Literary Review, The Aurorean, Liquid Imagination, The Tishman Review & others in the USA.

​Larimee

​Buddy Holly’s glasses
frame your blue agate eyes
today’s oil paint hid way below
the cringing chewed, edges of your nails
your curls more Van Gogh then Holly--
 
a knife painter.
 
Waves froth your crown
finger-pushed             shoulder-brushed
strands behind each ear – 
a handlebar mustache
tickles-kisses.
 
Nights sees your Cheshire grin
at coffee houses – acoustic tones rise
            as you bounce me on your knee
once, you framed me in sepia—nude
 
            mused, you flamed.
 
Where are you now Lothario,
artist and sage?
 
In Seattle reborn on a canvas stretcher
or strumming on a stage?
  
 

​YOLO
New York, New York

​jam the steroids into Xmass overdrive
fiddlehead the palmed passport, carol
through the Peaceable Kingdom of JFK
airport             the Big Apple
 
entrenched in a classy bar, I stir a swizzle stick
laced with olives in a Bloody Mary withdrawal
from the flotsam and jetsam of cosmopolitan kink
 
[next to me]
 
a Rudolphed horned Cornwaller slather’s brown
beer across a dry tongue beside his doe-eyed,
like antlered, significant-other
 
[burning traces of  vodka
fume through my celery stalk]
 
the Cornish couple reminisces           Costa Rica fades-
squirreled away with their remaining euro’s for next
years vacation-they spend their last dead president
 
on fleek, pencil posed, I scribe
disregarding the family foursome shooed
by the maître d in his cummerbund
 
[life on the highroad YAaas
one could get used to this]
 
 

​Yuletide Terrors/ Rhineland

​A snowless winter season crisps. Hoarfrost lies in hollows
along cobblestone paths. Ghosts of bomb-blasted revelers rise
voiceless worrying early risers through slick morning streets.
 
Wary patrons harried by fearful thoughts stay tucked away
safe at home; they recall the terror and rampant death with
solemn wreathes whose red ribbons chastened the market square.
 
By tick and tock, the piper's indomitable shoppers come,
though sirens screech, the vendors goods; bratwurst, beer, pretzels.
and mulled wine draw them to the cedar-shingled Christmas Village.
 
Still, past memories hobble holiday-goers. The crowd is thin.
Police cars ring them like soft targets from behind multiple
concrete roadblocks, there are no rose-colored glasses here.
 

​A Kneaded Life

​I’ve watched him whither. He came to me a decade ago, stooped in pain. The fine-boned features of his face and the clarity of his Irish skin still holding on to a genetic predisposition to beauty. He was a small man but in height only, the oceans filled his heart. For a decade, I held him upright. With the help of God, his shoulders, upon which Atlas stood, released their burden, pulled back from their curl about his core. Touch was a healing balm from the helter-skelter of his life. As my fingertips and palms, the heel of my hand explored his dis-ease; he thawed, not like a snowflake but a glacier. Decades of stuffed down regret, and remorse, cajoled to release with no expected outcome but rest.
 
the clutter
of his life surrounds –
snow falls
 
Parts once strong: pride that flew, legs that skied, eyes that could take the measure of a man; now, rest every afternoon. There is no need now to mark the time. Still, he wears a watch, a Christmas gift from his love. The office lays footsteps from his backdoor. He feels they still need him.
 
his sailboat
sits wrapped in canvass –
winter winds blow 
 
First Published in Liquid Crystal Imagination

​The Political Hot Potato

​Standing on gargantuan haunches,
his middle rounded and his cheeks
            as dimpled as an Idaho potato;
the politician pontificates, yipping and
scratching
with little aplomb.
A root vegetable   and or  
a Pomeranian could make a point clearer.
 
Truly, a laughable sight, if not for the fact
            that he was chosen to represent us.
The half-witted rant almost topples him
 as he attempts at a strut.
His Lilliputian feet cause him to wobble.
Oh yes, there was an “I” for everything,
            ready to sprout, to lie alongside the pork
 tossed in for flavor with the rest of the spud.
 
Is it possible;
you do not recognize this bug-eyed charlatan,
this freebooter, this self-entitled demigod,
            behold your elected official.
You know, the one who has a retirement package.
You know, the one who has his health insurance
             paid for by Uncle Sam.
 
They say,
“If you don,t like the heat, you should get out of the fire.”
You know, there is nothing like a good baked potato.

​A Working Class Retreat

​Sunday, oh, Sunday, Judas of days
paid for with scuffed knuckles
& work-blackened eyes.
This layback-day, when getting
some peace may  refer to
getting a piece of ass.
 
Sunday, whether birthed as
a nuclear sunrise
or scribed in Palm ash           
this perfect confection                      
this pious parfait
this cherry sauced in silence
recharges the working class.
 
Hurray for Sunday,
            meat-eaters at play 
            barbecues & beer
sans communion whine,
no work today!
           
 
Hybrid Reality
 
Soul progress--
backfield in motion
The guff—chose, chose, live grow leave    GO,
purged from heaven,s goal, jump-started in a human mold.
 
             White clapboard poverty with tiger-lilies blooms,
blueberry-rake wasps send riffs of Emerson, Whitman,
and Longfellow through wefts of wool on workhouse looms.
Dawn, mothers, hazel eyes, father Davidesque form,
chosen to drive twixt a Jew and a screw
          a magnet of lunacy--
 
an agate tumbled in the stream of life
part of the dream lesson         scream      lesson.
 
          An abuser of power, one who had roared,
          Eve shaped now, weak and mewling in weeds of woe,
          I began again.
 
My caregivers lovers torn, my guardian a pedophiliac uncle,
upended by a lewd father who craved sons. Adult child, searching
amongst the Word      for the Word is God           and god--
there are so many words.
 
Root-ripped scenes from Aphrodite to the Golem--
my shiksa mother taunted. Her shame seeped in
the reek of borsch. A pumpkinseed amongst the pricks
of Brooklyn—a wild flower planted in asphalt, crooned to with
Doo-wop-ditty. Here Jew,s bopped to a Dago harmony,
stuffed with bagels, and bialys. I can still recall the French
twisted strands of bubba,s hair.
         
Clipped, stripped, shoved into yet another
mold by true believers, ah yes, fanatics all.
The struggle to survive raged dipped in a bath
of acid and Thorazine, among Polish priests pedaling
platitudes to the sisters of St. Joseph.
 
Raped by trust and betrayed by lovers,
a rose married to a prick-less thorn,
empathy was gained in a crucible of fire.
 
First Appeared in Wilderness House Literary Review
 
 

​Being Flesh and Bone

Magnetic Resonant Imaging,
I aM—Ru?      am I?
Will the omnipotent wizard speak    see within?
A prick inserted into a blatantly vaginal core
for inspection, resolution, and rejection.
 
Am I but the sum of my parts?
Can the sea of me be picture-parted?
 
Mmm, it's not a sound said as often as a hmmm
but then again what do either imply?
Does the existence of breath denote being?
The bellows pump and spark become flame,
flame rises and becomes blaze, life can be
defined by such small things--
will wonders never cease?
 
I aMMM,  hmmm, you RRR, am I?
Mouth music vibrates between fleshy lips,
 
Can it be, do you feel its pull? Boxed-in,
you cannot see. The banging pulse lifts hairs
on my arms—alarming me, raising
the wary volume the hum to hmmm.
 
Thoughts linger on the lips of What-am- I
brought into being by the aM R I.
 
aMMM,  hmmm--RRR you?
A damned device cannot answer.
 
Id-less silhouette on the celluloid page
eyeing, voiceless slit, NO sage
what can it say
of who am I.
 ​

It is a Rose Sprung
​Goethe es ist ein ‘Rose’ entsprungen
​

Just outside the city walls ringed in roses,
Rosenfriedhof, Rose Cemetery blooms,
fairest in the Fatherland.

Leaven cakes iced in concrete or royal brass
pan the gravel paths; the husks which lie here, 
no longer have a care, no longer wish for power,
no longer seek false glory. Yet, even blest ground
cannot stay the rancid thoughts that rise— 
sewer fumes amongst the roses.

ashes, ashes, we all fall down

Plagued by ignorance, then by pride, as supplicants 
they came to death and lay, side by side,
and someone planted roses. 

Open-petaled, lotus-like, sweet-scented, are the
posies, but nothing alive can mask the grotesquerie
of Nuremberg’s past purges.

ashes, ashes, they all fell down

The ring of Sieg Heil, the click of heels, the Fatherland
an ever-present reverie, latent, just below the sugared
crust; the piping swirled, the surface glaze
of pretty roses.


First Published in Page & Spine 2016

​

Monet’s Garden Gate
​

The gate’s open to Monet’s Japanese garden
beckoning, and green as Giverny’s winter wheat,
but there’s no time for a glimpse of the pond within.
 
Monsieur’s Rose Cottage’s locked to all but roosting wrens
though curved trellises invite, and a path entreats.
The gate’s open to Monet’s Japanese garden.
 
But, the tour bus’s door closes, we can’t go inside.
Deep within spring lilies sleep in their frosted retreat
but there’s no time for a glimpse of the pond within.
 
Black skies sully the palette, a torrent begins
all hope lost in the thunder’s accompanying beat.
The gate’s open to Monet’s Japanese garden

with a glance, we leave; we can say that we’ve been?
A dream sought, not found, Normandy’s gem incomplete.
but there’s no time for a glimpse of the pond within.
 
Accustomed to beauty, the plump driver’s chagrined;
yet, he’s kept to schedule; we’ve stayed in our seats.
The gate’s open to Monet’s Japanese garden
but there’s no time for a glimpse of the pond within. 



First Published by Allegro Poetry Magazine

Dream Gets in Red and White

Hunger haunts the mainland. Cymbals and fireworks crescendo
through an amethyst haze as Hong Kong’s Chinese New Year 
begins. Kettledrums resound with a throat-tickling throb; gongs
shake glass like the Dragon, Flame-Dances. Mirrors sewn on his 
body reflect torchlight from satin skin. See him pounce past
displays of chrysanthemums.

Tourists pack the ways like Chi Chi sticks decked-out in 
lucky red: cherry cars, maroon money, hong bao, crimson 
clothes, paper lanterns, red animals pasted on their panes.
The sky over Victoria Harbor sprouts fireworks of pink peonies.
Up-side-down the buildings pose on the light-raked, deafened, sea. 
Flame wishes for prosperity confetti the visual plain. 

Pray the ghosts of year’s past leave in peace, as rockets burst. 
Return, return, from the Technicolor displays. Muffle your
ears to the pyrotechnic din. 

Food gathering’s a necessity, gunpowder displays are passed. 
Markets overflow as commodities unattainable on the main-
land get swaddled back to Xian, Beijing, and Shanghai-
Powdered milk—a dream-get.
    
crowds disperse
with the sulfurous fog:
on a dumpling morn

​

​Neap Tide

Now life has almost passed us by,
and peaceful resignation reins;
the beach, a spawning ground of old,
shrieks mournfully in seagull tones.

The neap tide’s come to lull the shore;
crab molting’s own the water’s edge.
Forewarned, am I, of nature’s course
in grains of gray and casings banked.

Hand in hand, we lovers walk-on; 
each throbbing with the pull of tide.
We sink in sands both wet and warm
soothed by the skies now overcast.

As faithful as the moon on high
between the water lines, they spawn;
in estuaries at peace, they nest,
eggs as small as grains of sand.

Will you come when the moon is round
and leave your molted shell beside me?
Will you sense the celestial call
or let the scavengers find me?


First Published by Eunoia

​

Pickled Madness
​

Born a wee bit ‘early’ like a crocus 
covered in the snow of March an
unwelcome stranger am I, new to a
clueless world, child of the Jew.

A wee bit early for proprieties sake, yet, 
Mother never admitted such to her dying breath.

Bit ‘early’ the Maniac’s would say “ayah?”
like a daffodil in a soft wet ripe spot of humus.
A bud of brightness, but, out of place-
A Crocus croaking beneath the weight of prejudice 
A hybrid combination    of drink and mind
covered in the afterbirth of woman.

In the snow’s icebox Mother was born, a
child of German extract and Mayflower heir.
Of March springs mother knew little. She was
raised at the foot of Mt. Battie. He was 
unwelcomed, this stranger, except by her.

Am I not, the child of ‘pickled madness’, aye,
to a clueless world was I born. Clueless 
as to the exotic mix, world child 
as are so many now,
of the Jew.

First Published by Wilderness House Summer 2013


* Original Nonce Form each line begins with words
in order of their placement in verse one.

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